Letters From the Editors

Hello Niks,

Centered, that’s what I am. Finding my space smack dab in the Beatnik poetry explosion. Riding the Big Bang I’m a real whacked Sally, baby, let me tell ya. I named my last band the S.O.B.s. Band members when asked said, “Yeah, I’m in the band. I’m an S.O.B.” Just think calling home to Mom: “Mom, I’m a son-of-b-bitch!” Band of realistically whacked Sallys, that one. Good at hitting the stage with de-tuned guitars and laryngitis. Oh sample the you-tube to check out my buddy’s band, “Weed Whore.” Talent does seem to improve when you’re on you’re on stage on your back rolling around, screaming.

Yeah I still sit around writing instant classics. Classics that get rejected outright. The gems then sit in a file, not lonely, but content, may I say happy? Yes happy they are happy they were written by I, Al Franken.

But thanks. Grateful art I. Another way of saying that is Art Garfunkel. For the poems. The spasms of brilliance that grace our ‘zine. We are climbing! With your help! You are us but we are not you! You are you! Give thanks for that. It’s like a poem I wrote. It went like this:

Somebody’s got to be me,

and dammit it’s me!

I thought about prefacing the dammit with “Van” name checking “the muscles from Brussels” but thought twice and decided upon the negatory in choosing such usage. I will leave you this time good readers with a bit of Beatnik wisdom. Passed from ‘Nik to ‘Nik down through the centuries, listed in many ancient Beatnik books of wisdom, it is eerily prescient and uncannily accurate. It goes like this:

Some men smoke

but Fu Manchu.

Thank you and keep from not choosing voluntary death. Learn not to spurn. Please send poems! And thank you!

Mahalo

Randall

…………………………

Greetings dudes and dudettes,

Kool Aid may be tasty, but it is a breeding ground for social cavities. If I am Googled, on the almighty engine that seemingly continues to turn the world every 24 or so hours, my name appears. Just like everyone else.

But the other day, someone pointed out to me that a “religious leader” named Chris Butler exists on this churning earth. I do not use those quotations lightly, as his appearance is reminiscent of a West Virginia hill hick created by incest who decided that Hawaiian shirts and delusions of preachy fables shouted atop wobbly tables were always in style.

He is a cult leader. A leader of a lost flock. The zombies of a forgotten world. A leader of the ignorant few who see the Light in a man who fucks fourteen year olds and impregnates his follower’s brides. One of many men to proclaim themselves with the nameless title “Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa”. Even referring to himself as a Krishna. A god of flesh and bone and living amongst men. Like the one in the many Good Books and Renaissance arts, would kill and skin the heathens to save a few empty chairs in their version of “heaven”. This “god” with my “Christian” name even murdered a man just to create ripples on a vacation lake.

But as every fairy tale ends, he will get away with murder by cyanide suicide.

To be continued into…Deconstruction

I have spent the last two true blue moons attempting to deconstruct poetry.

We all want to deconstruct poetry. We may hide it. We, however, do wish upon a gunshot star.

We all want to be like Ginsberg and quill the methodically typewritten, “Howl and other poems”, however, his same famous lyric has befallen our generation and the next, and another who will never know his words.

We all want to be like Kubrick. Deconstructing motion pictures with a silent film in the soundtrack era. “2001: A Space Odyssey” may have landed a man on the moon, but Jupiter is still in another universe to us.

We all want to be like Hunter Stockton Thompson. Turning thirty-three words of journalism into a psychedelic prophecy of things that were to come, and things that had already came before him. His stained pages still hold the seed of creativity.

We all want to be what we want to be.

We, however, cannot construct a sentence,

we, however, can deconstruct every language.

P.S. We’ll still sit and grin as the submissions keep rolling in.

The Artist Currently Known as Chris Butler

Hello,

Been a while. Anybody die? This goes out to how many? I hope all your lives are christened with happiness. If not, hold on. You can do it. Get out the crayon and write. Yeah poems. Dig? I’m not really writing all the live long day. I’m cheating death, though, but considering becoming more equitable with the process. My poetry career certainly needs vodka. That is, if I ever had one. A poetry career that is. Ever been out and someone asked you what you do and you answered: “I’m a poet.” Lucky you don’t get your ass kicked.

I remember when I was young I told people I was gay so they wouldn’t think I was homoserxual. My friends told me to stop telling people I was gay. I figured they wouldn’t think me gay if I told them I was gay. Is that cultural appropriation? Hope so.

We all fail. I’m just better at it. Does that bother you, dear reader? It should.

But please, brothers and sisters, and trans of all types, please send poems. That’s right I said it!! Poems! Write and email them to; anilliteratepoet@hotmail.com. You set ’em up, and we’ll knock ’em down. Legend has it that Mr. Butler has butled his way into not a few poems. Cowboy poets and poetesses from Wyoming never met him, however. Go figure.

Write I tell you write!

Sincerely,

Randall 11/3/2018

It is the present no matter what time or date you read this. That is the beauty and pain of everything, including transporting thunk memories and futuristic scenarios. We have to be hopeful, after all death will save us all. For a while.

Now let’s get to poetry. Poetry involves thought-words. Writing it is fun. Or should be. Getting rejected submitting it to editors is not. Therefore we at the Transgender Lesbian Cowboy are temporarily altering our editorial policy. To engender submissions (from same-sex women) we are hereby resorting to a publish-all philosophy. No worry, we shall separate the wheat from the chafed in time, and quite probably retain the by-product. And promote it gaudily. Did you know fanfare means trumpets blowing? Not strumpets, trumpets. Larger than life little Donald’s. Not McDonald’s, the real thing. The real secret sauce. Not just Thousand Island. No person is a Thousand Island – though Xavier Holland comes close. Tried to watch the film “Caligula” the other day, on the Ffilms.org free film site but the site of the naked Malcolm McDowell scared me off. Too with O’Toole, Peter and his scruffy Tiberiun countenance. I prefer my Malcolm drugging at the milk-bar. My O’Toole fastened down in my trousers. But Oh! The Caitlin of it all! Where, dare I ask, or whom, kept the dis-members only, ah, thing? Oh my lord and how long was the operation?

But forget all that. Forget all you can, even the intrusive memories, good and bad. Good because inevitably good turns into bad, and bad because…ah…well don’t forget the bad memories because the bad turns to good. Just ask Fredric Nietzsche when he is trans-valuing the lips of a horse. I remember watching ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” when I was a young humanoid and they always talked about “the agony of da-feet” when they showed a crashing ski jumper. I guess Italian influence has permeated culture more than ancient Rome. Also, I was at a bar in Phnom (Phnom means hill) Penh, Cambodia, speaking to an Englishman, insisting England was “a whole gay nation” when he did some silly-assed begging to differ. Great American I am I won the argument when I told him he was in denial and I don’t mean standing in a river in Egypt. The lady Khmer bartender laughed (I was sitting slouched slurring words at the bar) and I hands downed the little slap and tickler. After all when I discovered they call underclassmen “faggots” at Eaton I just knew they weren’t calling them “bundles of sticks”. But enough for now, though this now will be present whosoever whensoever anysoever ganders upon these signifiers in any galaxy, universe, tiny or big, anywhere, anytime, if they make it.

Let’s make it; write, submit, we publish, all, for now. Let us immortalize at least for…for now…an always present at different times, everywhere. But I’m still angry for all those years the Lone Ranger was calling his comrade Tonto, which means “stupid” in Spanish. But what after all, can you do? Except die, to live on. Live on with your own written poetry published all by us, we cowboys of the unsure, confused kind. Thank your graciousness and right honorable highness-es of all kinds, for all times, of all places, in all ways. Even Muslims may your bombs dud and aims not be true…God willing.